Thursday, June 29, 2006

Figments

How strange it is that small children can't tell the difference between real and pretend, since they pretend all the time. A fellow skit participant had the idea that perhaps kids expect that adults don't pretend. This led to the rather disheartening reflection that adults do pretend, except it usually gets a lot more messy and complicated than it was when they were kids.

Part of the reason I like literature and theatre so much is that you know where you are. The characters are real to you, but you know they don't exist in the physical world. As for the people who surround you in that physical world—it's harder to tell which of those are real towards you, and which are only real to you. (If you grasp that last distinction, then you grasp the dilemma.) Art offers a clarity that is absent in much of life.

Who have you invented today?

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